Tag Archives: onions

Yes, I have gotten quite bad at keeping up with Vegan MOFO, and this will be the last prompt that I will make a post for. I technically will be posting a review of How It All Vegan, which was suppose to be my favorite vegan cookbook. But this post was for the prompt “What was your first vegan meal?” Truthfully I probably had some vegan meals before I went “vegan.” I had spaghetti and tomato sauce plenty of times. But, when I first started my vegan journey in college, I remember making many meals from How It All Vegan and The Garden of Vegan.

So this dish is from The Garden of Vegan, and it has been altered a lot over the years. My culinary skills have gotten better, and my pantry has gotten larger. But this use to be my impress a person type of dish. Back in the day I use to live on 16th and Webster in Philadelphia. It is funny seeing how much it has changed, at the time we had a rowhome that had no neighboring buildings. It looks like there are now buildings sitting next to it. I was about a mile away from my classes, and even further from a lot of the grocery stores. I needed a bike pretty badly.

My roommate’s boyfriend was really into biking culture, and had a spare bike to give her. She had no intent of actually biking around, and the bike was much too tall for her. So like any college student, I chimed in if he was interested in giving me the bike…. for free. We struck a deal, he would give me the bike if I made him a vegan dish. He really couldn’t think of anything that didn’t have meat, cheese, or eggs in it. Naturally he loved the meal.

I still have my bike, though it is reaching the end of it’s usefulness. I hate biking in the suburbs because no one treats you properly on the roads. Plus we have a storage issue with the bikes, and I need to fix the wheel, which I am putting off.

As mentioned before, there has been lots of alterations with this dish. For starters, the pie cuts best when it has time to sit. In fact, these photos were taken the next day when the pie was really cold. You can also play around with all the veggies you pick for the inside, use whatever you have kicking around in your fridge and adjust cooking times.

I also have altered the pie crust quite a lot. I remember taking the dough and just squishing it around to fill in any holes in the past. But as I make more pie crusts for desserts, I’ve learned a few tricks. Mostly upping the fat and adding some besan instead of all flour. Sadly, I didn’t chill the dough long enough and didn’t flour the surface enough, so the pie crust is a little… funky looking.

My mother recently had some hip surgery done, so I stopped by to visit her and brought some food so she wouldn’t have to be in the kitchen. She already prepped some meals, but it better to have too much food, than too little. I made her a fresh dish of Pad See Ew from Vegan Eats World. But I also gave her some leftover tomato cobbler that I made earlier that week. I figured it would be a good dish to have to switch things up a little in her diet.

The name is a little deceiving. When I tell people about it, they get confused and think it will be sweet. It is probably more accurate to call it a tomato casserole, but there seem to be a lot of similar recipes that call this dish a cobbler. Oh so confusing! I am not sure what region this made in or the history, but it is pretty stinkin easy to make and it great when you have a cherry tomato plant that is making more than what you can eat on your salads.

The beauty of this recipe is that you can just toss the tomatoes in a bowl and cover them in the flour. No chopping. I might of chopped some of the cherry tomatoes in this dish since they were huge at my CSA. I also included yellow pear tomatoes, which were very awesome. Mix and matching the small tomatoes make the dish really yummy. So use cherry, grape, sungolds, or whatever heirloom tomatoes. It will be worth it.

I originally based my recipe on a dish that had caramelized onions in the filling. But I figured I should step up on the flavor and included some poblano peppers. This really makes the dish, giving a little bit of a tex-mex flavor. Seed the peppers, but if you want some heat, try to leave in the white fleshy membranes that the seeds are attached to. And if you want to kick the dish up even more, feel free to pulse in some daiya cheese into the biscuits!

I will leave on this note- a few days after bringing my mother the dish she texted me saying she loved it…. but she put cheese on it. Hey, I get it, you eat cheese and that is your decision, but it is a little insulting to put cheese on the vegan dish I am trying to share with you. Seems a little crazy, but I am also sharing my points of view and ethics when I share my vegan dishes. So omni-eaters, if you are eating a vegan dish that was made for you, don’t add cheese to it, and if you do, lie and say didn’t. XD

I am getting so over my current apartment. I know I’ve mentioned how I’ve bought a rowhouse. It is an exciting adult step for my husband and I, and a little scary. We went to our inspection on Saturday, and turned out really well. We are requesting $1,000 worth or repairs before going in, and there isn’t anything we would care about it they said no to (and I think only two requests they legally need to fund us or fix). Going through the house again makes me want to start designing everything.

There is a WHOLE MONTH before we can move in, and it is killing me. I want my dishwasher, god I would love to take a plate and just put it away and out of sight. I would love to only have to handwash a blender and french press in the morning, then a few pots at night. I would also love to wash my clothes whenever I want and not have to worry that if I leave my laundry in the machine and then be a burden to someone else. I want for Toulouse to have stairs to run up and box windows to stare out of.

To try and keep my mind occupied I am trying to do the Summer Shape-Up on The Fitnessista. It might be fun to have new recipes to try out, and heck switch up my breakfast plans a little even! This is the first day in years I didn’t have a SMOOTHIE! It was oddly really hard, but I think tomorrow my body will cope with it a little better. Funny since I read so many articles about how smoothies are calorie bombs that don’t keep you full for long.

This will also help with spicing up my workout routine. I’ve been pretty much just been running and going to an Orangetheory class each week. So it probably will be nice to get more weight training in, especially since I will be lifting many many many boxes in a month. No need to workout on moving day.

This recipe was resurrected from the dead this weekend. I originally made the recipe, wrote down notes, and loved it so much that I took photos for the blog. I edited the photos, but waited to post it since I had a few other recipes I wanted to put on the blog. Fast forward a few weeks and I couldn’t find the recipe. At that point summer was creeping in and the desire to cook a casserole had disappeared. So I figured the recipe would never make it to the blog.

Then my husband decided he would clean the computer area. And what did he find? The recipe! I am pretty excited about it because I would like to make this recipe again this winter. I love Korean sweet potatoes. They have a chestnut-like flavor which I totally recommend using in this recipe. If you can’t find any, the closest substitute is a white sweet potato.

I also love the touch of sesame flavor on the top crumb. The sesame seeds really add an extra crunch that contrasts the creamy sauce and soft noodles. It adds a nice twist to the normal creamy pasta casserole dish. I really don’t think it emulates any western cream based noodle dishes, like alfredo or macaroni and cheese. This really is something that stands on it’s own. Continue reading →

Is there some unspoken party rule that dips should be named after other foods? I mean there is buffalo wing dip, hoagie dip, jalapeno popper dip, banana pudding dip, smores dip, it seriously gets out of control. But I have to admit I have a soft spot for pizza dip. It was sort of my family’s staple appetizer for parties.

The original version was pretty easy to make, just take cream cheese and sour cream and beat together. Then add tomato sauce, cheese, and pepperoni chunks. Now, clearly the original isn’t vegan. But I would make the argument that I prefer my newer vegan version, though I miss the pepperoni. So instead I topped it with other items you would find on a pizza, onions and peppers. But you are free to use whatever you want, like olives, faux pepperoni, faux sausage, tomato slices, etc.

This dip is really tasty. It made my omnivorous friends scratch their heads when they found out there wasn’t any dairy in it. And they ate it so fast I couldn’t take any photos showing the different layers.

My biggest tip with the dip? Finding the right container. You don’t need the dip to fill up all the way to the top. Keeping nice thin layers is ideal so you can get a little bit of everything in one scoop. I am merely poor and lack a huge collection of dishes to cook in (gotta work with what you got)

I remember the first time I had green bean casserole. I didn’t have it until I was in my 20s, it was never a Thanksgiving staple in my family. My brother in law grew up eating it and requested it for the dinner spread. My sister read the can of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup, frustrated by the simplicity. Really just a can? What are “french onions”? We all gathered around the table and tasted the dish. My sisters and I all agreed it was a mistake and voted off the dish from future dinners.

I didn’t listen. I couldn’t shake off has a very classic dish could be so bad. This prompted me to make a 100% from scratch version of the dish, and made it vegan. Each year I kept tweaking the recipe, and trying out new methods. This year, as I made a pre-Thanksgiving testers batch, I found the perfect match.

I debated posting this dish since the photos didn’t turn out so great. I thought I could wait till after Thanksgiving and post it with better photos. I mean, this is a dish you could make for Christmas, right? But then after discussing Thanksgiving dinner with my Mother-in-Law, it seemed that she had plans for her own green bean dish. Posting the dish was a now or never deal.

This is a great dish if you are the guest invited to Thanksgiving. It isn’t hard to make, but it does take some time and planning. First you have to roast the onions, then you have to cook the green beans, then you need to make the sauce, then combine into the casserole dish. So it is great to make, getting all the messy work out of the way of the host. Even better is that it is a vegan dish that doesn’t seem “healthy.”

The plan is simple. Bread and bake onion rings in the oven. Cook the green beans by boiling them for 5 minutes, or use frozen beans (fresh will give the best results). On a stove top make a mushroom-miso like gravy. Cover the green beans with the “gravy” and top with onions. Heat again in the oven. Simple enough.